


Gainsboro

by Ashery



Category: Queen (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Criminals, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Brian and Freddie are usually the masterminds, Brian is Hacker, Con Artists, F/F, F/M, Freddie is Grifter, He needs friends, I know nothing, I make a lot of things up, I now nothing about art, Inspired by Leverage, John is Thief, M/M, Morally Grey Characters, Roger hates guns, Roger is Hitter, Theft, because they wrote most songs in the early days, but he's also good at disguises, but he's not just muscles, john is lonely, might be a bit darker than Leverage, so Queen adopts him, they're a group of con artists
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:08:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28026792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashery/pseuds/Ashery
Summary: John was in the middle of a very awkward position when Roger Taylor barged into the vault and into John’s life. (In which Queen is a group of con artists, and John is an expert thief who ends up joining them.)
Relationships: Brian May/Freddie Mercury, John Deacon & Brian May & Freddie Mercury & Roger Taylor, John Deacon/Roger Taylor
Comments: 20
Kudos: 29





	1. The Weight of Misery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John gets caught while trying to steal a sculpture.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! This is my first time posting a fanfiction here, despite having lurked on this site for about five years. It is my second attempt at a Leverage-inspired Queen fic (I wrote about thirty thousand words in the original one and discarded it because I didn't like how I approached the story) because this idea have been plaguing my mind since COVID happened. If you haven't heard of it, Leverage is an American crime drama television series which has 5 seasons and 77 episodes in total (and they're getting a reboot some time in the future!!) . You don't need to have watched the show to read this fic, but I would recommend the show to anyone who likes crime dramas.
> 
> I would like to warn you that I haven't been writing for a long time, so the beginning feels a bit awkward, but I promise it gets better in the middle.

John was in the middle of a very awkward position when Roger Taylor barged into the vault and into John’s life.

His hands were firmly planted on the black-and-white checkered floor, supporting most of his weight with his arms as he lifts his legs above the ground, carefully avoiding the red laser beams crisscrossing the room at random angles. He froze as he spotted a blond man standing at the entrance of the room. 

After committing his first crime at the age of twelve, John Richard Deacon had only been caught three times. 

The first time, it was because of a security camera hidden away at the corner of a convenience store, which John hadn’t noticed because he had been desperate to fill his stomach with food that didn’t come from the floor or garbage cans. John had been thirteen at the time, and had not been careful enough, but ever since then, he had learned a few tricks that could render any security camera useless. It had started with learning to find the blind spots in certain areas, and had evolved into him learning to loop security footages. 

The second time, he had been betrayed by the gang he once thought of as his family. At the age of fifteen, John had switched from being a cat-burglar to becoming a car thief. He had joined a local gang of car thieves, mostly made up of ruffians over the age of twenty, so being the youngest and weakest among the group, he was often pushed around and made fun of. But that didn’t matter to him. What mattered was that they provided him with a place where he could learn, and accepted him as the homeless runaway that he was, without making a huge fuss about it. 

The workshop where they worked for hours every day had become the closest thing John had to a home—a familiar place where he’s accepted as he was, like the house where he lived in back when his parents were alive and the world seemed like a magical place—and George Parker’s gang had been one huge family to him, even with the frequent scuffles amongst the members.

The workshop was raided one day, although most of the gang had long since been gone by then; all but for two members who had not been warned about the raid as the others had been. One of the members they had left in the dark about it had been a man called Fagin, a sickly, thin old man who tends to mumble and talk to himself, which had him pegged as the creep of the town, and the other had been John. Fifteen-year-old John Deacon learns to trust no one but himself that day.

The third time was life-changing, although it wasn’t anywhere nearly as traumatic. John had broken into a huge mansion at the end of Livingstone Street, and had almost managed to get away with some jewellery when an old woman appeared before him, so suddenly and without the slightest of sound. She was small and frail, her wild, greying hair a stark contrast to her dark skin, and she had been dressed in an oversized black shirt. If it wasn’t because of her harmless-looking appearance, in his panic John would’ve considered smashing her head in with the trophy on the shelf beside him. 

But her warm smile had thrown him off. It was kind and gentle, and it reminded John of his own mother more than he liked to admit. Her steps were slow and shaky, but unnaturally silent as she closed the distance between them and took his hand into her dark, wrinkly ones. That was the day John became the apprentice of the legendary thief, Thema Scott. John didn’t know what he did to deserve such luck (but if he had to guess, he would’ve said that it was the time he jumped into a river to save a littre of kittens tied up in an old yellowed sack when he was eleven) but it’s unthinkable that John would be lucky enough to get caught by a thief instead of a cop for the second time. Or is it?

Maybe it’s lucky enough that as John froze in panic, eyes wide and jaws firmly clenched, the blond man who had caught him in the middle of making his way through the laser did not seem to respond right away. He stood at the doorway, clear blue eyes wide and mouth slightly agape as he stared at John in what seemed like a mix of surprise and awe.

When his arms began to shake, signaling him that he had been in the same position for far too long, John resumed his acrobatic movements through the spaces between the lasers, as if he hadn’t just been caught. The elevator that will ensure his escape stood across from him, behind the pedestal where the intricately-designed, trophy-sized sculpture from the 17th century was placed, protected by bulletproof glass and two lines of red lasers circling it like two planets orbiting its sun. 

The sculpture was shaped like a man crawling on his hands and knees, face morphed into an expression of despair. John had never been big on art and never really understood how some people could stand and look at paintings in appreciation for hours (despite having stolen countless works of art from places like Musee du Louvre and the Art Institute of Chicago) but he hated this particular artwork because it gave off a very creepy vibe. Poids de la Misère, they call it, and from what John found out whilst doing research on it, the miniature sculpture was the last work of Lucien Allard before the artist ended his own life. 

If he could just take the statue fast enough and make a break for his life, he wouldn’t need to spend the rest of his life in prison. He can’t get caught now, not whilst he was carrying the hope and expectation of history's most-wanted thief.

He chanced a breath of relief once he reached the end of the laser grid, but did not waste any time before taking a circular plate-sized device out of his small backpack. Puss, as he liked to call it, rested cold and heavy in the palms of his hand. It was a laser glass-cutter which he had designed and built himself, over the course of almost nine months (it’s like his baby in some ways) and Thema had been really proud of him for creating it. He pushed the silver button at its center and watched as it whirred into life, two blue circles lighting up as a signal that it’s ready for use.

“Hey, um, are you going to steal that?” A soft, raspy voice broke through the silence as John eyed the two lasers moving rapidly to circle the glass box protecting Poids de la Misère, trying to find the right moment to connect the adhesive side of Puss to the surface of the glass. (John’s mind should really have helped him by coming up with ideas of how to get rid of the threat standing across the room, separated from John and his proud invention by the laser grid in the middle of the vault, but all it supplied him with was the thought about how cute the said-threat sounded with his slight accent.) 

John probably should have ignored him and carried on with his task, but instead, he turns around to face the man on the other side of the room. He can’t focus on stealing Poids de la Misère if someone was blatantly watching him from behind—at least that’s what John told himself as he finally had a proper look upon the blond man. 

He looked young, probably almost as young as John was, and was wearing a black shirt with intricate, black floral design, with the first few buttons left unfastened. Tight leather pants hugged his legs, and his sparkly pink converses stood out against the black and white of the checkered floor. He wasn’t dressed like someone who would be inside Martin Chance’s company vault at 3 o’ clock in the morning.

John shrugged in response to his question, maintaining a neutral expression.

“No, I’m just gonna look at it and put it back,” he said, sarcasm dripping from his tone, thick and viscous as honey. The blond man’s clear blue eyes seemed to light up in amusement, the corners of his lips tugged upwards into a small smile as he chuckled. (Thema told him that his sense of humour is comparable to a rotting banana, but if anything good came out of this night at all, it’s the fact that John knows now that his mentor must have been wrong.)

John’s unhelpful mind supplied him with unwanted thoughts of how cute the blond looked, with his huge eyes and cherubic features. 

“Well, I came here to steal it too, so I can’t let you have it, mate,” the other man said with an easy smile. For a moment, John wondered if he was also being sarcastic—his tone seemed serious, despite how happily he had said it, and his blue eyes looked at John unblinkingly as the words slipped from his mouth. 

John frowns in doubt and confusion as he noted, “You’re not dressed like a thief.” 

“I’m dressed like a fashionable thief,” he replied, not missing a beat, and it earned him a small smile from John. John shook his head, turning around to face the miniature sculpture. He really shouldn’t be looking so comfortable with a self-proclaimed thief in the room, wanting the same object that he did.

“Well, I came first so it’s mine,” John said as he steadies Puss in his hands again, aiming for a split second break when the lasers surrounding the glass box move behind it. When the opportunity finally arose, John placed the circular device on one side of the glass box, before immediately removing his hands, just in time for the laser beams to come circling the front of it again. 

Puss was soundless as it slowly cut a circle through the protective glass, taking a mere twenty seconds before the blue lights turned green, telling John that the cutting process had already been finished. John was about to retrieve the glass-cutting device when the shrill sound of an alarm pierces through the air, nearly making his heart jump out of his ribcage in surprise. The alarms within his head went off at the exact same time, driving him insane with the amount of anxiety that shot through his veins at the sudden stimulation.

John whirled around quicker than the laser beams circling the little crestfallen man on the pedestal, and felt blood drain from his face as the blond man crossed the room without a care in the world about the laser beams surrounding him.

“Are you crazy? What the hell are you doing?!” John asked, heart pumping blood to his face in a mixture of anger and horror. The guy must be an absolute moron. That must be it. He was starting to appear less cute in John’s eyes, even if just a bit. Which is good, he supposed.

It took the blond a total of five seconds to jog towards where John was standing before the pedestal. “It’s like I told you, I can’t let you have this,” he explained, hands reaching out to remove Puss from the glass. John swatted his hand away, and the blond gasped as he cradled it in his other hand, glaring at John as if it was the most offensive thing in the world. John ignored him, mind more worried about the approaching footsteps coming from outside the vault.

The ringing sound of the alarm, combined with the marching of the guards quickly approaching them was overwhelming, especially given how quiet it had been up until the point where the idiot claiming to be a thief decided to trip the alarms. John’s heartbeat was thunderous in his ears, and it matched the rhythm of the heavy footfalls which were rapidly growing louder as seconds passed.

As fast as he could, he retrieved Puss and took the miniature sculpture that had already caused him so much trouble, ignoring the laser beams moving around it. It felt so weird and unnatural, sending a tingling sensation where his skin met the laser beams. After spending years upon years working on avoiding those damning laser beams, all of a sudden, it didn’t matter anymore.

A gunshot echoed through the air, and John instinctively ducks behind the pedestal.

A bead of cold sweat trickled down the slope of John’s jawline as cowered behind the metallic structure, holding the sad little man close to his chest as if he could protect him from the oncoming gunfight if he’d just give it enough love. This was not his scene—he was a thief, quiet and quick to run. He was never meant for confrontations.

A few men were shouting, but in his state, John could barely hear them over the harsh thumping of his own heart, let alone over the ever-present alarm that became a background noise to the chaos happening in the room. John didn’t realize he had been instinctively holding his breath until his lungs burned with the need for oxygen. 

He breathed in deeply as he tried to slow down his breathing and control his heartbeat. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine the beach where he had his last family vacation at the age of seven. He forced himself to picture the smile on his mother’s face as she watched her children frolicking in the sun—it was blurry and vague, his mother was lacking all the details that defined her in his mind’s eye. But it did make the center of his chest warm with affection and fondness, despite the adrenaline that was rushing in his veins.

Once he was sure he was no longer at the brink of a panic attack, John opened his eyes. He chanced a peek from behind the pedestal, trying to keep his breathing steady. His vision was half-covered by the metallic structure of the pedestal, but from his angle behind it, he could see three men laying strewn across the black-and-white floor. They were dressed in identical black suits, and even though John couldn’t see very clearly from where he was hiding, he thought that two of them were holding guns which were lying useless in their hands.

It took John a while to notice that he was being talked to. “I’ll take care of these guys, so don’t you dare leave!” The thin and raspy tone of voice was familiar, and it was no mistake for him to assume it was the blond’s. Those words felt like a slap to him, waking him from a deep slumber. John felt like the switches in his brains were flipped on again.

He had his target item, and now all he had to do was leave safely, and he could collapse into his bed and sleep off his exhaustion once he made it. Despite the words shouted at him earlier, John stood up before making a break towards the elevator. The gunshots had stopped for a while, so he didn’t look back when he forced the elevator door open and jumped to cling on one of the metal bars at the far end of the elevator shaft. If he looked down, he would’ve seen the elevator room motionless a few feet below, but he wasted no time in climbing his way up.

He’s back in his element again. It felt so relieving to be able to do something he’s very good at again after being in such an unfamiliar situation. He heard the blond’s voice call after him, but did not stop climbing.

John was about ten feet away from the exit when he heard a mechanical whirring echo beneath him. He did not stop despite being taken aback by it, as he had been in this situation before. He knew he could climb to the exit before the elevator car reached him. He spread his legs to balance between the two opposite walls of the elevator shaft and forced the elevator door open with his hands.

In his haste, he did not fail to notice that the elevator car was moving extremely slow, especially for an elevator that led towards a vault room. He did not waste more time thinking about it though. Once his feet were firmly planted on the ground again, he ran towards the edge of the rooftop.

The night air was dense and cold, and a canvas of darkness stretched over his head, with only the moon as a source of light that illuminated his surroundings with a sense of clarity. There was nothing but the cold mouse-gray floor underneath him and the elevator within his sight. 

John was in the middle of fastening the straps around his waist when the elevator finally came to a stop with a soft ding. He had already secured the one end of the thick black rope around the stone railing at the edge of the building, and the other to the harness he’s tightening around himself, so all that was left was to jump. 

He froze, however, when that voice spoke to him again. “Wait, please!” He shouted from across the building. From the sound of the footsteps approaching him, the blond thief must have been alone. John didn’t know what possessed him to behave so irrationally, but John turned to face the other man. Maybe he just wanted a good look at the face of this crazy son of a gun for one last time.

The blond man looked the slightest bit out of breath when he reached John, and his long blond hair reflected the moonlight, giving off a nearly reddish colour in the darkness. “Hey, thanks for waiting. Can I have the thing?” He asked, looking at John with huge blue eyes sparkling from the moonlight. 

“No,” John deadpanned, standing at the edge of the building, ready to jump at a moment’s notice. For some reason though, he didn’t. Instead, he stood there under the night sky, as if waiting for something to happen. For something that will change his life and turn his world around.

The blond man tried to close the distance between them, inching closer step by step cautiously as if John was a wild animal. He stopped when John took one step closer to the ledge. “Please?” He begged, as if asking nicely would change the mind of a seasoned criminal. John levelled him with his most blank stare, one that could make even his mentor uncomfortable.

If it worked on him, he didn’t show it. “I’m not really a bad guy, you see,” he said after a moment of silence. He looked relaxed for someone without the upper hand over the situation, his shoulders lax and his features calm. “As you probably know, Martin Chance is an asshole who steals from people who have nothing. Me and my friends, we were going to steal the statue to help his victims recover,” he added, his face more serious than it had ever been tonight.

John couldn’t help but snort at that. To the blond’s credit, his facial expression did not change, and he continued to look at John with the serious expression that did not belong on a face that should be smiling at any given moment. “You really expected me to believe that?” John asked, raising an incredulous eyebrow.

“Well,” the blond started, looking sheepish as he scratched the back of his head, “I know how stupid it sounds alright. But it’s true, I promise.” Those pair of clear blue orbs looked into John’s green ones steadily, reflecting determination and earnestness. His lips were pressed into a thin line as he pleaded through his gaze.

John did not think he’s telling the truth, of course. But he does feel that the man before him was not lying. Maybe John’s heart and soul wasn’t as dead and pitch black as he had initially thought, because he found himself wanting to believe, for the first time since a very long time.

John tried his best not to overthink his decision as he reached into his backpack to retrieve the miniature statue. A look of surprise flashed upon the blond’s features for a moment, before his expression melted away into one of joy. It was a look that suited him best, his eyes gleaming with mirth and his lips tugged into a soft smile. 

“Seriously?” He asked, sounding as astonished as John was at his own decision. “You don’t want anything in return?” John did not even consider the offer as he threw the statue carelessly to the other man, who caught it effortlessly. 

John had decided upon stealing Poids de la Misère simply for the sake of stealing something, a little practice just so he wouldn’t get all rusty. He didn’t care about the art or history behind the sculpture, and he might as well just steal from a bank if it had been money that he was after. That’s why, even though it was millions of dollars that he’d just let slip from his fingers, it did not feel as if he lost anything. Just his time and energy, maybe, but if he was honest with himself, he felt alive tonight more than he had any other nights.

The unpredictability of the theft tonight, coupled with the tingling sensation of doing something stupid for once in his life, made him feel like a different person. A welcome change.

He turned around to finally jump and disappear into the night when the blond spoke again, “Wait, what’s your name?”. The streetlights below shone like the stars in the sky, and the cars that filled the roads seemed like ants crawling back to their nest from where John was standing. A few stray brown strands that had escaped from John’s bun whipped against his face as the cold night breeze passed him. 

If John was going to act stupid tonight, he might as well see through it until the end. “John Richard Deacon,” he answered, uttering his full name just because. 

A gasp of surprise escaped the blond man, but John did not turn around to see his shocked expression. Deacon was the man wanted in nine countries for theft, the man who trusts no one but himself, and would not hesitate in resorting to the most despicable of crimes if the moment should call for it. The person who had just given up the sculpture wasn’t Deacon—he’s nineteen-year-old John who yearns to believe again.

“The Deacon?” The other man asked, sounding at awe. A mixture of pride and guilt whirled in his chest. John was seconds away from jumping when the blond spoke again, “I’m Roger. Thanks for letting me have this.” John did not reply this time, jumping down the building instead. He could feel Roger’s eyes burning on him as he felt his body relax at the pull of gravity. 

"What do you mean you gave it away?" Thema asked, pinning him under a disapproving gaze. Her dark-coloured eyes were narrowed in disbelief, and the corners of her lips were turned downwards in a frown. Even with how harmless she looked—the lines that were etched on her face weren't unkind, they made her appear more affectionate and more wise, and the ways she stood in the middle of John's kitchen with her steaming mug of coffee, with her back slightly hunched, making her appear smaller than she was—she still managed to make him wince at what looked like his stupidity.

"Well, it's not like I really needed it anyway. The diamonds from last week is more than enough to last me an entire lifetime," John mumbled, now ashamed of his actions, as he poured himself a cup of the coffee that his mentor had generously made for both of them. 

From the corner of his eye, he saw Thema leaning against the kitchen counter with her arms crossed. "You do realize you're acting out of character right, dear?" She asked, her voice soft and kind even with the small hint of accusation in her tone. John scoffed, realizing that there was no getting out of this conversation without a thorough explanation of why he, the great apprentice of the legendary thief Thema Scott, had simply given away a million-dollar sculpture to the first person who asked.

He turned to face his mentor again, only to be met with an unwavering stare. "I don't know why I did it, okay?" John started, voice heavy with frustration. "This guy just came and nearly got me caught, and then asked for the sculpture, saying that he's going to sell it to help the poor or whatever," he had mumbled out the last part, now realizing how stupid it all sounded, and hoping that Thema's hearing had worsened enough that she didn't hear it.

She gave a hum, although it was unclear if she heard the part about the thief claiming to be a modern-day Robin Hood (and John accepting it without a question like the fool that he was). A moment of silence stretched between them, but it was not uncomfortable. Both of them had moved from the kitchen into the living room where the television was droning quietly in the background, filling the silence. 

John had thought that Thema had dozed off on the other side of the sofa when she spoke again, "What does he look like, this guy?". John shifted in his seat to face the old woman better, and briefly considered changing the subject, as he would like for both of them to forget his stupid mistake as soon as possible, but ended up deciding against it. Thema is a woman with a lot of connections, and it wouldn't be weird if she'd heard about Roger, as she knew a lot of people from the underworld. 

John wouldn't be opposed to finding out who the blond thief really was, as that would mean that it's possible to know if he was lying about giving to the victims of Martin Chance. "He said his name's Roger. Blond with blue eyes, around my height and seems about my age. Wore some pair of ridiculous sparkly pink shoes. Pretty cute too," John described, replaying the scene at the rooftop within his head.

It had been a huge mistake, apparently.

"Pretty cute?" Thema perked up from where she was seated across from him on the sofa, a smirk stretching her lips and her brown eyes lit up with amusement. John mentally kicked himself. He hadn't meant it in any way, it's just that objectively Roger is quite cute, with his huge doe eyes and soft smiles, and anyone with eyes could see that. 

John groaned as he buried his face in his palms, definitely not ready for this conversation or the teasing it will surely entail. "I don't mean it like that. It's an objective observation, and I'm not having another one of those 'You should find love while you're young, John' talks," he turned his face away from her, crossing his arms above his chest and huffing like a petulant child.

Thema will turn literally any conversation into one about John's love life. In all honesty, John didn't think he could handle being a criminal whilst being in a relationship—he had always imagined getting married, settling down in a quiet place, having at least five children and working a (legal) nine-to-five job to support his family, much like his parents did. He didn't think that bringing an innocent man or woman into his life would work well for either of them, given that he's wanted in a lot of countries and the FBI had been working their asses off to catch him.

His mentor seemed to think otherwise. Love prevails, she always said. She had gotten married at the young age of twenty-two with the love of her life, Lavender Woodland, who had also been involved in theft and robbery even before they met. John had seen photographs of both of them during their younger days, and even in pictures they seemed like a match made in heaven. (Although he'll never be able to see the Thema who basically adopted him when he was fifteen, and the young Thema in the photos, with her hair dark, long and curly, and her eyes shone brightly against her smooth dark skin, as the same person.)

"I was about your age when I first met her," she said, a wistful smile on her face. Her eyes seemed distant, and glazed with a layer of sadness, as they always were whenever she talked about Lavender. She had died too young. At the age of thirty-five, Lavender had been shot to death by a well-known assassin, right in front of the old woman. John's willingness to win the argument dissipated into nothingness as Thema smiled, although it was bittersweet.

"Alright, alright. I'll keep an open mind okay?" John said eventually, reaching out to place his hand atop her thin, wrinkled one. She smiled brightly, although the hint of sadness lingered in her brown orbs. They had drifted into another comfortable silence after that, and they ended up watching the cheesy comedy show until about three in the morning before Thema left. John had offered to send her home, but the old woman had refused, saying that she's not that old yet to be babied by him. 

The next day, John was cutting up some onions to make some fried rice when he heard her voice come out of nowhere. Several years ago, John would've jumped out of his skin at the sudden appearance as, being a master of theft, Thema had the habit of making the least sound possible. 

"I've got some information for you, dear," the elderly lady had said from somewhere behind him, and even without looking back, he could practically hear the smirk gracing her lips as she said that. John spared a glance at her as he went to check if the oil was properly heated, and saw that she was sitting with her arms folded over the dining table, leaning over with an expression of excitement on her face.

He distractedly responded with an inquiring hum as he threw the onions into the pan, taking a step back as the hot oil hissed in defense. "I talked to some of my sources to find this Roger of yours, but there are just so many criminals under that name. And we don't even know his last name either," she began. John turned to her, his interest piqued slightly at how this was going. 

"I didn't get anywhere with that, but I did find out that there is a group of con-artists who claim to steal to help the poor against the rich and powerful." Thema had gotten up in order to busy herself by helping John crack some eggs into a red bowl, probably just to build up the suspense. John had been quite frustrated as he watched her drag the conversation by beating the eggs with a whisk, "And?".

The old thief smiled proudly as she pushed the bowl of eggs away to face him, "And one of them goes by Roger Meddows." John had involuntarily widened his eyes at that, his mouth going quite slack because of the surprise, before he realized it and tried to school his features again. To his dismay, his shock did not go unnoticed as Thema giggled merrily at his reaction. (At least he hadn't been holding any plates he could possibly drop.)

John rolled his eyes at her antics, although in the way that you would to someone you're fond for. "It seems that the group calls themselves Queen, and their cover is a small restaurant in Kensington," she continued, producing a crumpled up piece of paper from the pocket of her floral dress. John took the folded paper albeit hesitantly, opening it to see the address of a place called Taste of Rhye in cursive writing. 

He raised an eyebrow at her, but shoved the piece of paper in his pocket anyway, already deciding to pay it a visit—just to check if Roger was lying about giving to Martin Chance's victims, and nothing more. "And what do you expect me to do with it?" He asked regardless. The old woman gave him a knowing look as she walked over to where the onions were slowly browning in the pan, "Just check if they're the real deal. I'm curious too—my source said that they're good". John knew there was an ulterior motive to it, but decided not to mention it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any thoughts? Should I continue this?  
> Comments are very much appreciated, but please don't say anything hurtful because I can't cope with it well.  
> Thank you for reading, and enjoy your day everyone!  
> (Also, there was a reference to a book somewhere in this chapter. Did you notice it?)


	2. The Best Potato Ever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John visits Taste of Rhye, and ends up feeling like his entire career is being mocked by a potato.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back! I would like to thank you all for reading, leaving kudos, and taking the time to comment on this fic. It makes me very happy that there are people who are interested in this. I'm actually pretty happy that most of you haven't seen Leverage because that means my unoriginality isn't quite as obvious as it will be for fans of the show haha.
> 
> I finally figured out how to use italics and add lines using html, so I might have gone overboard on that because I was excited about it. (Sorry about that!)
> 
> (By the way, the reference in the last chapter was Fagin from Oliver Twist if any of you are curious.)

For a cover-up business of a criminal group, Queen's Taste of Rhye was decorated quite lavishly and elaborately. 

The tables were covered with table-cloths of various colours and patterns, but all of them were of the same cotton material. They reminded John of the dresses Thema liked to wear these days. The cloths that covered the backs and seats of the chairs were just as lively, ranging from black-and-white dotted patterns to checkered orange motifs. Several paintings hung on the mint-coloured walls, and although they aren't the million-dollar paintings John would be tempted to steal, they were tremendously detailed and could possibly provoke some sort of emotion within him if he had the time to actually pay attention to them.

Several plants hung from the ceiling at different heights, and there were lights of different sizes and shapes that illuminated the interior of the restaurant with a warm, orange glow. Almost every inch of the walls were occupied with either an intricately-designed tapestry, vintage-looking cupboards and cabinets, or paintings with fine, hand-carved wooden frames.

Instead of looking over-done or overwhelming with how intricate the décor of the restaurant was, John felt quite welcomed by the bohemian atmosphere that the place seemed to give off. At least that’s what he had felt before he got caught red-handed the second time in just two nights—the brightly-coloured and vibrant ornaments now seemed to glare at him, as if mocking his blunder.

No matter what you might think now, John refused to believe that he's that bad at stalking. 

He had dressed the part—dressed in an indistinguishable black hoodie with a dark blue cap to cover up the upper half of his face, his long brown hair tied up in a bun—and had sat inconspicuously at one corner of Taste of Rhye during a relatively busy night. John was sure he hadn't been that obvious in eyeing the blond man across the restaurant, who seemed to be happily chatting with a group of college girls, oblivious to his presence.

The sunglasses he'd worn should've hidden the direction of his gaze, and yet, a dark-haired man with a pair of mysterious, warm-coloured eyes had approached him and called him out on it, "Darling, you've been staring at my friend for nearly half an hour." His tone had been cautious, but not accusatory, and his voice was rich and lilting as he spoke. He took the seat opposite of John as he levelled him with a steady gaze, awaiting John's response.

"I don't know what you're talking about," John muttered quietly as he shoved another spoonful of mashed potato into his mouth. If Thema had been watching him, she'll never let him hear the end of this. Across the room, Roger seemed to be gesturing wildly with his hands, appearing to be animatedly telling a story to his companions. John shifted his gaze back to the man sat before him who had his hand folded atop the table, who was now raising his eyebrows with an amused expression, the corners of his lips quirking up slightly.

"We both know that's a lie, dear, so do us both a favour and answer me honestly," the way he spoke was very soft and gentle, with affectionate nicknames that seemed to put John at ease instead of making him appear overwhelming. He wouldn't appear intimidating if it wasn't for the facts that: 1) he had caught John (a talented thief if he did say so himself) whilst stalking Roger in the middle of a crowded restaurant, and 2) he had an air of mystery and elegance so thick that it made him appear almost unreal, yet his facial expression and body language made him appear warm and approachable.

He could not be an ordinary person.

John heaved a sigh. He knew a battle he was doomed to lose when he fought one. "Fine, I was watching him. Who are you?" John's eyes darted around as he tried to think of a strategy to escape his situation. With how crowded the restaurant was, it shouldn't be difficult to cause a scene and use the commotion as a distraction to make a break for it. His eyes zeroed in on the cup of tea at the side of his hand. 

"Don't you dare throw that on me! I just bought this coat," the man gasped in horror and warned, as if reading John's mind. John tensed up in his seat, panicking. He brought up a hand to adjust the pair of sunglasses which sat perched at the bridge of his nose, although it was mainly to make sure it was still there. The dark-haired man in front of him chuckled before speaking again. "Calm down, darling. I read people for a living," he had said, leaning forward as he tried to catch John's gaze, "And I could tell you're not a bad person. Care to tell me why you're stalking my friend?"

John looked at the man again, but did not say anything. Wavy midnight hair framed the man's sharp features and accentuated his prominent cheekbones. He was dressed in an expensive looking black coat, with a silver necklace wrapped around his neck that matched the bracelets he was wearing. He waited patiently for John to open his mouth again.

"It's a long story," John said, eyes drifting back to the corner of the room where Roger laughed merrily. "I have all night," the man said, making a gesture with his hands after catching a waiter's attention. The young man with bored-looking eyes seemed to understand the vague gesture, and came to their table with a warm cup of tea in less than a minute. John considered running away, but with how bad his luck had been these past few days, he'd rather not risk attracting the attention of even more people—or worse, Roger's attention.

"Fine. I gave something to your friend, and he said that it'll go to some poor people. I just wanted to make sure," the story seemed shorter than John thought it was, especially with all the details involving their criminal acts omitted. The mysterious man in front of him looked thrown off for the first time during their conversation, his eyes widening slightly and his jaws loose. He had leaned in even further, when he asked, "John?"

John couldn't help but roll his eyes in annoyance. Great, so Roger probably told all his friends about the stupid guy who gave Poids de la Misere away because of some cheesy Robin Hood story, and had even given them his name. He blinked in surprise when the dark-haired man stretched his arm over the table to offer him a handshake. It did not compare to the utter shock he felt when the man spoke again, "Mercury. Freddie Mercury".

It was John's turn to gape in surprise, ignoring the hand offered to him in favour of staring at Freddie in astonishment. Freddie did not seem offended that his handshake was ignored, but he smiled shyly at John's reaction. "Mercury? As in the conman and imposter?" John whispered when the initial shock of meeting Freddie Mercury in person had subsided.

John wouldn't typically be so quick to believe someone claiming to be Freddie Mercury. After all, Mercury was a legend in the world of criminals who was said to be a master of disguise on top of a cunning con-artist, although many claimed that his existence was merely a rumour. But as far as the man sitting in front of him, who was trying to hide a cat-like smirk behind his cup of tea, was concerned, the possibility seemed very real. (Also, John wanted to believe that he really was that Mercury, as it would mean that he wouldn't need to feel embarrassed for the rest of his life for getting caught by a random dude while stalking someone.)

"Yes, that's me. And you're the thief who stole Scotland's crown jewel," Freddie had said, a glint of amazement in his brown eyes. John couldn't help but blush at how Freddie looked at him, with so much adoration in his gaze. "Roger told me about you. Said you're cute," the dark-haired man smirked, and if John had been blushing before, he must now be an alarming shade of red comparable to the slices of fresh tomatoes in his salad. 

Freddie was teasing, but John could not tell if he was lying or not. A man with wild curly hair approached them then, sending their conversation into an abrupt halt and John couldn't remember ever being so relieved, as he had no idea how to respond to that. "Fred, a—" there was a pause as a pair of hazel eyes full of suspicion shifted towards where John was sitting, “—customer wants to speak with you.” The man who had just appeared beside their table was very tall and slim, and he spoke with a tight smile on his face that reflected urgency. His voice was soft and soothing, a calm in the sea of chaos that was the hubbub of the other customers in the background.

Freddie got up, looking more serious than he had been seconds ago. "Darling, Would you be interested in watching us work?" His deep brown eyes were looking at John expectantly as he pushed the chair he had been sitting on back towards the table. The curly-haired man stood patiently behind him, looking quite baffled, with his eyebrows creased and mouth the slightest bit agape as he stared at Freddie. “You could find out for yourself if we really do what we claim to do,” Freddie continued. John avoided Freddie's eyes as he went back to his drink, which was now cold. "We'll see," he muttered.

“Tomorrow at 8 in the morning. Come meet me here.”

John wasn't sure if Freddie could read him like an open book or if the other criminal was simply a trusting person, but he had smiled and looked quite satisfied as he trotted away towards a table across the room, where a young woman sat with her shoulders slumped.

The next morning, John found himself perched on the cream-coloured sofa of Brian’s apartment, staring at the image of a potato at the center of the large screen in front of him. Brian—the curly-haired man who had interrupted his conversation with Freddie last night—was sitting at his side, enlarging the picture of the potato on the screen (even though it was already ridiculously massive) by spreading his thumb and forefinger on the screen of the tablet he was holding.

John had tried not to appear too excited by arriving two minutes past the agreed-upon time, but ended up waiting for nearly half an hour for Freddie to appear. During the time he spent waiting, busying himself by munching on a croissant and sipping through his coffee, his mind had supplied him thoughts that Freddie had lied to him, and that he was an idiot for letting himself be betrayed again. He had nearly walked out when Freddie strolled into the restaurant, showering him with apologies.

He had then been led into Brian’s apartment, where both the curly-haired man and Roger had been waiting for them. The two of them had greeted him warmly despite how awkwardly John had entered the room, trailing behind Freddie with his eyes scanning the room and feet ready to run at a moment’s notice. Despite how soft Brian’s expression was as he shook John’s hand and politely introduced himself, and how enthusiastically Roger had pulled him to sit on the couch with a huge grin, John still couldn’t help but feel out of place.

He had expected to see cold, calculating criminals orchestrate a heist the way lawyers and businessmen spoke, with sombre expressions and unsmiling attitudes. He hadn’t been prepared to see Roger and Freddie teasing each other with witty comments and playful shoves as if they were brothers, or Brian rolling his eyes at their antics in exasperation despite the fond smile that graced his lips.

The atmosphere of the apartment was warm and light, reminding John of what was his home seven years ago in ways he wasn’t quite prepared for.

The briefing, as they called it (it wasn’t quite as formal as the name implied, Roger sitting next to him with a bowl of cereal on his lap, claiming he hasn’t had breakfast yet), started when Brian turned on the six liquid-crystal display monitors placed together on the wall to create a single large screen. John had blinked when a three-dimensional image of a potato appeared at the center of the screen, slowly revolving within the window titled ‘Super Tuber’ to show all of its sides in great detail.

“This is the Super Tuber, a genetically-modified potato made by our client, Anne. She’s a crop sciences major and this is her thesis project,” Brian explained, and with a click on the screen of his tablet, a few lines of words describing the potato appeared next to the three dimensional image. “Not only does it contain more nutrients than your usual potato, it can also take anything that nature can throw at it. Flood, drought, bugs, disease—nothing can stop it.”

“In other words, it’s the best potato ever,” Freddie supplied helpfully from where he was sitting cross-legged on the armchair at the side of the couch. Brian nodded enthusiastically, adding, “England’s potato crop is worth more than three and a half billion each year, so this Super Tuber is worth more than say—diamonds”.

At that shocking revelation, John couldn’t help but whip his head back from where Brian had been speaking towards the three dimensional image reconstruction of the potato in utter astonishment. The image was still rotating slowly, displaying every lenticel, lateral buds, and scale leaves in great detail, as if revelling in the fact that despite looking so ugly, the potatoes could put the diamonds John had been risking his life to steal to shame.

To his relief, it did not seem as if he was the only one flabbergasted by the statement as Roger had dropped the spoonful of cornflakes he had been directing towards his mouth, the spoon ending up on the floor with a loud clang. “That is worth billions?!” He had asked, mouth agape and eyes wide, gesturing at the potato on the screen. He had turned to look at John, who responded by shaking his head with a look of bewilderment on his features, whispering, “It’s worth even more than I am.” 

“All of us combined, I bet. Except for Freddie—but don’t tell him I said that,” Roger whispered back, picking the spoon up from the ceramic surface of the floor and putting his bowl of cornflakes on the coffee table. John nodded in his daze.

Whilst John was still overwhelmed by the revelation, a photograph of a bald man dressed in a fancy suit appeared on the left side of the screen, the name Collin Sanders written at the top of it. “That’s Collin Sanders, the CEO of Verdagra. Very power hungry, and very paranoid. He’s good at staying on top, and acquisitions are his favourite part of the biz,” Brian explained, not looking anywhere as baffled as John had felt. 

Another window appeared on the right side of the screen, displaying the picture of a wide-eyed woman in a black business suit, her expression stern and her gaze steady as she stared into John's soul from behind the screen. “This is Jenna West,” Brian explained, “She’s the chief of operations. Ambitious and cutthroat. Basically, Sanders calls the shots, and West does the dirty work for him. They have been bringing a lot of muscles to intimidate Anne into giving away her work. A few days ago, they beat up Anne’s father, who’s now in the hospital with a punctured lung and fractured ribs.” 

A melodic sound reverberated across the room, combined with the sound of Freddie’s phone vibrating against the glass surface of the coffee table, drew the attention away from the screen on which the potato image was still triumphantly spinning. They watched as Freddie picked the device up from atop the small elliptical table. 

There was a moment of silence during which the person on the other side of the line spoke, and Freddie was solemn yet gentle as he replied, “Darling, I need you to stay calm and stall them. Just do whatever you can to buy us time until we get there, okay?” Brian had already turned the screen off by the time Freddie hung up and addressed them with a hint of urgency in his voice, “We need to go. Verdagra is back and they’re bringing worse than muscle—lawyers.”

The atmosphere of the room, which had been sunny up to that point, had quickly become tense as the three of them bolted towards the door, John hurrying behind them uncertainly. He was both glad and surprised when Roger pulled his wrist, urging him to move faster as they descended the steps of the fire escape, the metal grating groaning loudly with each step that they took. “Quick, you should ride with me,” he said. 

John quickened his pace, no longer uncertain if he was still welcomed. They reached a deserted parking lot on which a shiny red van was parked next to a new-looking silver Range Rover. “I sent the location through the group chat,” Freddie mentioned as he climbed into the passenger seat of the red van. Roger had responded with a loud hum, getting into the silver car and starting the engine. John was about to step into the vehicle when he felt a hand on his upper arm.

Brian was standing behind him, one of his palms opened to reveal a coin-sized, translucent piece of electronics. “This is for you—a two-way earpiece. We use it to communicate,” he said, dropping the small earpiece onto John’s hand. He immediately placed it in his ear where it fit snuggly, nodding. “Did you make this?” he asked, unable to suppress his curiosity despite the impatient look Roger gave their way from the driver’s seat of his Range Rover. 

Brian had smiled shyly, the corners of his eyes crinkling and his hazel orbs gleaming with mirth as he responded, “Yeah, I made it with my dad.” Brian’s smile was quite easily one of the most delightsome sights John had ever seen—there was something about Brian’s curly hair, the far-away look in his eyes, and the way he seemed to float around innocuously that gave him an almost ethereal quality, which magnified with the curl of his lips. 

“That’s amazing! I like to build stuff too,” John said, genuine awe in his voice. Brian looked pleased as he responded, “Really? What kind of stuff?” John was about to avidly launch into a very long speech about the latest electronic he had been building when they were tragically interrupted by Freddie, who had rolled down the window on the driver’s side, leaning over from where he was sitting on the passenger’s side, “I really hate to do this to you two nerds, but we’ve got to hurry.”

Both Brian and John were hesitant as they nodded at each other in a silent agreement to continue their conversation some other time. Both vehicles then pulled out of the parking lot and began their journey.

The drive to the farm where Anne lived would’ve felt excruciatingly long if his conversations with Roger hadn’t been so enjoyable.

Outside, the scenery of grey buildings and bustling crowds had faded away into a terrain of dark green and brown that blurred together with the motion of the car. Roger had the window beside his seat rolled down, and his hair was catching the wind, golden strands fluttering wildly against his head as he smoked, grey puffs of nicotine escaping into the February wind. John found himself relaxing into the soft cushion of the car-seat, stealing glances at Roger’s profile as if it was a cluster of diamonds, as they sat in silence, their conversation having melted into a comfortable silence.

John had learned quite a lot about Queen during their drive. As he had already guessed from the ease with which he had handled the electronics in his home, and the amount of computers that was visible from just his living room, Brian was a hacker. Roger had explained that the computer expert held a grudge towards corrupt tycoons (he hadn’t elaborated on the reasons why, and John didn’t feel like it’s his place to ask) but according to the blond, before turning twenty, Brian was one of the most straight-laced people of all England.

John found that quite believable, as even that morning when they briefly spoke, although weighted down by the crimes he committed, Brian was effortlessly one of the most innocent-looking people he had met. His eyes reflected honesty and he spoke with a tenderness that seeped into every word that spilled from his mouth. If John had met him in the streets, he would’ve laughed at the notion that such a benign-looking man could also be a criminal like himself.

What John found quite unbelievable was Roger’s role as a hitter—at least until he remembered that the blond had miraculously come out unscathed after a confrontation with a group of angry guards the night they met. John hadn’t actually seen him fight his opponent, nor was what Roger had been doing with the guards a big concern to him then, so the possibility that the older man had simply defeated the sentries in a physical fight, all by himself, had simply escaped John’s mind. 

If John was honest with himself, he would’ve thought that he could easily win against Roger in a fight. He wasn’t much of a fighter himself, but he’d learned enough to survive, and the blond just did not come across as a combatant—he wasn’t very muscular nor did he seem athletic, and with his slouched posture he just seemed smaller although their height difference was miniscule. He looked like a model more than he did a bodyguard, even though he claimed to have been one at a point. 

He also found out that Brian and Freddie are in a romantic relationship, although according to Roger, they try very hard not to be. “They pretend they don’t love each other because of professionalism or whatever—but I watched them fail more times than I’ve heard Freddie say darling,” the blond had leaned in, whispering in a conspiratorial tone as if the other two criminal might be able to hear them, even though the earpiece Brian had handed him was now tucked away inside his pocket, wrapped in a piece of aluminum as Roger had insisted once they began their drive. “I didn’t notice that actually,” John answered honestly. 

“If you hang around after this, I bet you will,” the blond replied with a grin and John could not help but smile at the notion. The image of himself sitting in Brian’s living room watching as the three other criminals engage in a playful banter filled John’s bosom with the warmth he hadn’t realized he had been missing. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if he did stick around—having connections to other trustworthy criminals is a good idea, and the trio seemed like nice people, although John couldn’t be so sure from the small amount of time they’d spent together. 

“Anyway, I’m telling you this so you know they’re off limits, if you’re interested,” Roger said with a wink, his blue irises connecting with John’s gaze for a fleeting moment before they shifted towards the road that stretched endlessly before them. “Devastated, but I’ll keep that in mind,” he responded in a dry tone, feigning disappointment.

“We’re here,” Roger announced as they came into a halt on a stretch of land before a large farmhouse, pulling John out of his thoughts. Brian’s van, Red Special, as Roger had dubbed it, was nowhere to be seen. The petrichor that lingered in the air and the humid atmosphere was indicative of the downpour that had dampened the earth, and the sky was overcast and gloomy, as if empathizing with the woman who stood at the front porch of her home with a crumpled expression.

Her deep brown eyes were filled with melancholy as she watched them trod across the grassy landscape. He saw Roger putting his earpiece on before speaking, so John copied him by retrieving his from the pocket of his jacket, and unwrapped the aluminum foil around it.

“Hello, I’m Roger and this is John. Freddie and Brian are on their way,” the blond started as Anne led them to sit on the sitting of the porch where a few colourful cushions were carefully arranged. “Thank you for coming. They took one of the Super Tubers from me,” she began once the three of them had taken a seat. 

“They said that I violated their copyright by using their seed, but I never did! I tried to explain it but that woman told me that she could take it to court and take me for every penny that I have,” she explained, her head heavy with sorrow in her hands and her dark waves of hair falling like a curtain around her, veiling her from the harshness of the world. “This farm is all my father and I have, and I can’t just risk it! Not when he’s suffering on a hospital bed because of those people.”

Roger patted her back soothingly as she spoke, comforting words spilling from his lips. John sat rigid at her side, hands tucked between his knees and shoulders tense because he wasn’t sure how he should act—consoling others had never been a strong point of his. A voice in his ear that sounded like Freddie had asked, “When did they leave?”. Roger repeated the question out loud for Anne, who responded, “About ten minutes ago.”

The blond rose from his seat abruptly at that, so John copied him. “If we let the stuff get back to the facility, it’ll be like trying to break into Fort Knox,” he said, already reaching for the car keys. “Don’t worry, we’ll get it back for you. Get inside and lock all doors,” he instructed as they ran back towards the car. “Freddie and I will take the back roads and cut them off,” Brian informed through the device in his ear. Hearing so many noises come from a place he couldn’t see was quite disorienting, as they nearly drowned out his own thinking with every little noise and rustling of clothes.

“We see them,” Brian updated as they accelerated down the dirt path which should lead back to the main road more quickly. “So what’s the plan?” Roger asked from behind the steering, speeding up to an illegal rate, and if John hadn’t been a getaway driver at one point when he was twelve, he probably would’ve been clinging on the car seat, scared for his life. His voice bounced off the windows of the car and echoed in John’s ear through the earpiece at the same time, and he was pleased to note that the delay between the two sounds was miniscule.

Freddie’s voice was smooth and confident as he replied, “No plan, dear. Just live in the moment.” Two seconds after that, John could hear the opening of a car door and the clunk of it closing, accompanied by a panicked Brian whispering, “Freddie, what are you doing?” Roger immediately asked the hacker what the grifter was doing, to which the former replied, “He’s standing in the middle of the road, blocking them!”

They were all stunned into silence when the foreign voice of a woman echoed in their ears through the earpiece, “Excuse me?” When Freddie spoke again, his tone was low and he spoke in a breathy voice.

“Matthew Kailey, security consultant—I’m here to secure the product. I’ve been covering you since the farm,” he said, sounding almost like an entirely different person. The woman whom John assumed was Jenna West spoke again, sounding skeptical, “Kailey? I wasn’t briefed about you.” John wished he could see Freddie’s face, because even from the sound of his voice and the way he spoke through the earpiece, he sounded so convincing that John wouldn’t have stopped to consider if he was lying if it was him who the older man had spoken to. 

“The board of directors sent me. My car is a burn so I’ll have to ride with you,” he said. “Now Ma’am, there could be an assault team coming and we could just stay here and discuss this, or we can discuss it at Verdagra when the product is secure,” he continued with an authoritative tone. There was a small murmur in the background before there was the sound of a vehicle door clicking open again. At his side, Roger heaved a sigh of relief as John sat in awe at how easy Freddie made that look.

There was a rush of adrenaline that washed over him as he listened in on the conversation, trying to picture the scene in his head as he heard the start of the heist unfold in his ear through the two-way communication device. This was going to be as exciting as breaking into The Egyptian Museum, he’s sure of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really didn't want to stop the chapter here because I'm excited to get into the heist, but sadly, it'll be too long so we'll watch them steal the potato next chapter. Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates it, and I hope everyone has a nice day!


	3. The Slightly Burnt Potato

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The group infiltrates Verdagra, and Super Tuber ends up a little too crispy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took my longer than anticipated, because the chapter turned out to be twice as long as the others. It kind of upsets me because I wanted to keep the chapters around the same length, but I decided against splitting this chapter into two because it would make more sense to read in one go.
> 
> To be honest, I don't really like how this chapter turned out, but I hope you guys aren't too disappointed.

The Verdagra corporate building stood tall on London’s grounds, puncturing the sky with its modern cylindrical shape and casting an enormous shadow over the smaller buildings in its wake. The sky that stretched endlessly above it was devoid of cotton-like clouds, and the greyish light that illuminated the town bounced off the darkened windows of the building.

Brian’s Red Special was parked only a short distance away from the entrance of the corporate building, Roger’s car parked next to it. John was sitting next to Brian at the back of the red van, staring at the three monitors placed on one side of the van and watching silently as Brian typed away on his keyboard, the clatter of the keystrokes filling the silence that has grown within the walls of the vehicle.

“They’re here,” Roger’s voice resounded in his ear through the earpiece. John had thought that Brian hadn’t heard the blond—his face was scrunched up in concentration, his face so close to the screen of the monitors that the thief was concerned for his eyes. He was about to repeat Roger’s words to make sure that he’s aware of Freddie and Jenna’s arrival when the hacker responded, “Didn’t you say that once they reach the headquarters, the potato is gone?” 

The monitor on the left was showing sixteen different security footages at the same time, all of them which showed the inside of Verdagra, and when Brian clicked on one of them which showed Freddie and Jenna going through a body check near the entrance and the metal-detecting archway, the video enlarged at the center of the screen, pushing all other videos into smaller thumbnails at the bottom of the screen. The hacker dragged an icon which looked like a geometric pattern and dropped in on top of Freddie’s face, a web of bright green lines with yellow nodes forming around the latter’s features. John didn’t know much about software like these, but he guessed that it was a facial recognition program which will detect Freddie’s face in whichever camera he appears in.

“Yeah, but we have Freddie on the inside now,” Roger spoke again from where he was watching the entrance, blending in with the swarm of people entering and leaving the building. Brian hummed, albeit distractedly. He opened another program on the screen of the center-most monitor, and the window that popped up displayed a small on-screen dial pad, a few rows of what looked like call logs, and three sections with green borders with the words _Call From_ , _Source_ , and _Redirect_ to describing each one. “Freddie sent me West’s phone number, so we are now in control of her calls,” Brian explained as he copied and pasted a phone number from a messaging app onto the program with the call logs.

John found himself wondering how Freddie managed to do that, despite not having said a word during his car ride with Jenna West and her underlings. He liked to imagine Freddie pulling the COO’s phone from the pocket of her camel-coloured trench coat just as she was climbing into her car so that she wouldn’t feel it amidst all other sensations as she moved. Perhaps after discreetly checking it, Freddie had dropped it on the floorboard for Jenna to pick up thinking she’d dropped it. 

John’s focus was directed to the monitor on the left side as Brian pulled open what looked like a profile with Roger’s photograph on top of it. The name Roy Tanner was written at the side of the passport-sized photo of a very serious-looking Roger (his blue eyes were steely as he gazed into the camera, looking quite intimidating for someone whom John had witnessed making a penis joke with milk dripping down his chin, munching on a bowl of cornflakes). “Freddie told them he’s a security consultant so I have to make up a profile for him. They’re going to check his credentials any time now,” the computer expert said, highlighting Roy Tanner’s name to replace it with Matthew Kaley.

On the security footage near the lobby of the building, Freddie was led to stand near a set of black leather sofas around a low bamboo side table. “Stay here,” Jenna said as she walked across the lobby towards a desk occupied by two young women. One of her underlings, a bald man whose muscle-bound figure showed even through the immaculate black suit he was wearing, followed her lead. The blonde seemed to whisper something to her coworker, sending Freddie a look of distrust, and John guessed that she was telling the bald man to make sure the con-man was who he claimed to be.

On the footage, Freddie met her suspicious gaze with a steady, confident look, his chin pointed slightly upwards as he spoke, “Matthew Kailey, Valerian Security. K-A-I-L-E-Y.” Brian shook his head, muttering a soft, unintelligible curse under his breath, and changed the spelling of Freddie’s fake last name to match the one the latter had just uttered. He had already changed Roger’s photograph with Freddie’s face, and was now modifying the template to make it look credible.

John returned his gaze towards the right-most monitor where the security footage was, and watched as the bald man typed what must be Freddie’s fake name into a tablet. After a few moments, he raised his head and said something to his superior, to which she nodded curtly before reaching into her pocket and retrieving her phone. On the center screen, a few digits representing a local phone number appeared in red in the top column, blinking in and out of existence as if to emphasize its importance. “She’s calling the board of directors,” Brian explained as he redirected the call and answered his own phone.

“Yes,” Brian began after letting the blonde speak first, “Of course, we can neither confirm or deny our relationship with Mr. Kailey—that would be a matter for the CEO, Sanders.” Brian’s face was serious as he spoke, his voice less warm as it had been seconds ago when he’d talked to John. Jenna’s voice was carefully controlled as she thanked Brian, although she did say something like, “You’ve been the most helpful,” with an amount of sarcasm that’s large enough to make John snort in amusement, but not obvious enough to get her into trouble. 

“We can’t oversell this. I mean, a real member of the board wouldn’t discuss this with an underling. So now we wait,” Brian explained, finally leaning away from the monitors to straighten his back. By now, it was obvious to John that all of these little explanations were only for his sake, and he couldn’t help but feel touched at the considerate effort. The blonde on the screen began making her way towards Freddie and into the range of the earpiece, so John could hear her when she told the fake security consultant to follow her.

Their footsteps echoed feebly in his ear as they walked off towards an elevator. The security footage changed from the one in the lobby to the one in the elevator. “Where are they taking him?” John asked, once the group of four disappeared from the security footage inside the elevator, only to appear in a deserted hallway with a deep red carpet absorbing the sound of their footfall. At his side, Brian winced and shook his head as he responded, “Nowhere good, I’m afraid.” Freddie ended up in a dimly-lit room with four bare grey walls and a single table at its center. The hacker typed a few lines of code into the programme in the first monitor, and supplied, “They’re in a place called the Security Detention Room.”

Freddie was told to sit at one end of the wooden rectangular table, and he did so as Jenna occupied the seat opposite from him. A long silence followed as Jenna silently challenged Freddie in a staring contest, both of them sitting with their backs straight in the dim, oppressive-looking room. John’s mind was already wandering to the radio he might have forgotten to turn off last night when Jenna broke the silence that laid thick upon their shoulders, “I just have a hard time believing Sanders didn’t tell me about you.”

Freddie’s expression was impassive as he replied, “Believe me, he didn’t know. The board of directors hired me—told me to appraise CEO Sanders directly.” Jenna frowned during the silence which followed, tilting her head as she scrutinized every detail of Freddie’s features. It was Freddie who spoke first this lime, leaning forward with his arms folded on top of the table as he said, “You’re tough, and don’t get convinced very easily—I like that. I’m not blind. You’re the leader in the trenches. These men,” he paused as he turned his head to spare the two men guarding the door a glance, “They respect you.”

To her credit, Jenna’s face did not change as Freddie praised her. “Until I make a mistake, that is,” she said. Freddie’s voice was still low when he continued for her, “And then they tear you down. It’s hard being a woman with a vision, isn’t in?” John wouldn’t know for sure, but he thought that what Freddie was doing was feeding her with her own thoughts and feelings so that he could easily creep inside her head and manipulate her. There was a shift in her cold, calculating eyes, and he could see that Freddie was getting very close to gaining her trust. 

“Look, I know you need the potato from Anne Margold. It’ll increase your yield by 42% and reduce your irrigation needs by a third,” Freddie said, and even from the distance between Jenna and the security camera, her shock was visible on her face. She asked how he knew that, and even though it was Brian who had been feeding Freddie with all sorts of data during his staring match with Verdagra’s Chief of Operations, he replied, “The board. They hired me because there’s a security breach and they don’t know who to trust.” Freddie’s voice was full of certainty and confidence as he continued, “Ma’am, you have a mole.” 

Brian hummed at John’s side, turning towards John with another considerate explanation, “He’s running a con called the Romanian Circus. We turn the mark’s suspicion onto their own people, rendering them vulnerable to outside attack. Basically, we fake an internal enemy.” Brian spoke magnanimously and with so much passion, not unlike the way Thema spoke when teaching him the tricks and hacks in the business. While Brian was kindly explaining the situation to John, Freddie had continued talking Jenna into believing him, and when John’s eyes returned to the screen, the blonde was sliding what looked like a security pass across the table towards the fake security consultant. Brian probably didn’t think John noticed the proud smile on his lips, but he did.

“What he’s doing here is a variant—it’s called the snipe hunt. It’s the circus, but it’s leaning faster,” Brian said, and even though John honestly didn’t understand what he meant, he nodded his head and did not mention it. He wondered if there was a textbook which explains all cons there ever was, and if Brian had it memorized. On the screen, Freddie and Jenna walked out of the interrogation room, and ended up in Collin Sander’s office. There wasn’t any security camera there, but even from the just way he spoke, John could tell exactly what kind of man he was. He began the conversation by telling them that he first became the CEO of Verdagra on April 26th 2004 (John was guilty of starting conversations by telling people his date of birth sometimes too, but that’s just because he didn’t have anything else to talk about that doesn’t relate to his illegal activities) before talking about how everyone wants to take him down.

He also said that he was doing Anne a favour by getting her product out there with his resources—basically, he’s the kind of guy who thinks they’re a saint who can do nothing wrong, and that everyone is either envious of them, or worship them. “Sir, is the product secure?” Freddie asked once he finished his speech about how he  _ deserved _ a healthy cut after all he’d done. He responded with the only interesting thing that came out of his mouth so far, “It’s in the burn room. I’m the only one with the access.”

“What’s a burn room?” Roger asked even before he opened the back door of the van and entered. “It’s usually a vault within a vault. The walls are lined with therma, so all he has to do is press a button and all his dirty secrets burn to the ground,” Brian answered. John would like a room like that, actually, because burning everything down sounds like so much fun. Maybe he could invest in it in the future. “I’ll find you your mole, Mr. Sanders. First thing to do: lockdown. No one gets in, no one gets out. We trap them and root them out,” Freddie said from the earpiece. Brian gets up urgently at that, taking off the rainbow scarf he had been wearing and rummaged through a box before pulling out a dark blue shirt and a matching pair of trousers. “We’ve got a slight hit with the snipe hunt. They always involve a lockdown—the con only works if the crew could infiltrate the mark before the lockdown begins, so we have at most five minutes to get everyone in,” the computer expert explained.

* * *

Roger was still sulking by the time they crossed over to the front of Verdagra where an ancient-looking school bus was parked, small children in matching lime-coloured shirts getting off it one by one. When they saw the school bus enter their view, Roger had suggested that they hijack the school trip and pretend to be teachers as to avoid any suspicion, which is a brilliant idea in John’s opinion, but Freddie and Brian had disagreed.

“You can’t act, Roger,” Brian had said, his voice firm and anxious at the same time. The curly-haired man had found a way in by dressing up in a dark blue delivery uniform (one of the wide variety of costumes they had tucked away in a box in one corner of the Red Special. John thought he saw a frilly, teal-coloured Victorian dress in there too.) and had walked to the entrance of the building with a pile of boxes in his arm. John had no idea how or where Roger had managed to find those multi-sized boxes in such short notice, but those boxes seemed heavy and real when they toppled to the ground near the spot where a security guard was standing.

Brian had asked John for some tips on stealing the security pass which hung from the front pocket of the sentinel’s suit, and the thief had gladly told him to grab the pass when the target was moving so that they don’t feel the pull, and use the boxes to cover the movement of his hand. The hacker had seemed quite nervous initially as he thanked the guard for his help, but he pulled the trick off quite well as the unsuspecting victim moved to stand from his crouching position, unclipping the security badge from his pocket with speed and ease. “You’ll end up blowing our cover. Again,” he continued, and even though John thought he sounded more anxious at the thought of getting caught than he did sounding condescending, Roger seemed to have taken it the wrong way.

“We didn’t even get caught the last time—I knocked him out remember?” He said, a scowl on his face, “And I’m not  _ that _ bad. At least not as bad as your seduction skills.” The blond was rummaging the magic box of costumes, trying to find something less flashy than the rainbow-coloured sequin jacket he was wearing, at John’s request. If it had been up to him, he would’ve waltzed right in with his jacket catching the sunlight in a spectrum of colours, like a disco ball being smuggled into a corporate building. John turned to face the screen of Brian’s computers, his cheeks heating up as the blond shrugged off his jacket and peeled off the denim shirt he had been wearing inside, the creamy skin of his back exposed without a second thought. 

On the other end of the communication device, Brian sputtered indignantly and retorted, “Well, excuse me for not wanting to toy with people’s feeling like you have no qualms in doing.” John still hadn’t turned his head from where he was staring at the video of Freddie pretending to read some papers, trying to drown out the voice in his head that told him how great it would’ve been if the screen was black instead. The rustling of cloth behind him had almost quieted down, but he waited for Roger to tap his back and lead him outside before moving. “Shut up, Brian. You’re a thief too, so get off your high horse,” Roger muttered.

He was now dressed in a tight caroline blue dress shirt that showed his lean yet toned figure, and the black coat Brian had been wearing earlier, despite their apparent fight. Or maybe he wore it _because_ of the fight, to assert dominance in some way? Brian was about to reply when Freddie cut in, “Children, please! Roger, Brian’s right—you’re bad at acting. But that doesn't mean we don't still love you.” The blond huffed and stomped his feet as they made their way towards the entrance of Verdagra, and John was worried that they were going to attract too much attention. “Just go for it, I guess. It’s not like we have a choice anyway. You have two minutes to get in,” Freddie whispered. As if on cue, John took a glance at the watch he was wearing, confirming that it had, in fact, been three minutes since the lockdown was announced via Freddie. 

They managed to stop the group of school children just as they were about to climb the small steps which lead to the entrance of the building. A middle-aged woman stood out in the small crowd of children adorn in vibrant lime shirts, her short brown hair showing strands of silver and the lines around her eyes were deep, and spoke of experience and age. She smiled as they stood in front of them, although her gaze was questioning as she looked at them. “Hello and welcome to Verdagra,” Roger had said with the fakest grin John had ever seen. His eyes were dead and his tone was almost flat as he greeted them. His lips were stretched so wide that John was sure it must’ve hurt, but the curve of his lips ended up seeming like a cry for help more than anything. The brunette frowned at him, before tilting her head questioningly. 

John remembered panicking over the thought of getting caught, and by the time he realized his lips were moving, he had already spoken without as much consideration as he would’ve usually liked. “I’m Jason Dane and this is,” he paused, trying to come up with a name for Roger, “Richard Miller.” John realized in hindsight that he should’ve used Roy Tanner instead, but he personally didn’t think the name suited Roger really well, so he ended up using his own middle name out of his lack of creativity. “We’re your educational coordinators here at Verdagra. Hi kids!” He greeted as enthusiastically as he could, and his heart fluttered when the kids returned his greetings with bright smiles and excited waves.

“Well, ID and roster?” he asked, extending an arm towards the short-haired teacher. She handed him a clipboard and retrieved her driving license from her purse before giving it to him. John pretended to check both items, and nodded with a smile on his face, “Great!” Roger parroted the word, although his smile seemed less forced this time. “ We’ll see you here at 5,” John continued, gesturing to the children to follow him, and they were excited to follow before the brown-haired woman stopped them by extending an arm in front of them. The teacher looked at him with a surprised look on her face before frowning, eyes narrowing with suspicion as she said, “I thought I was to accompany them.” 

John was hoping that the teacher would jump at any excuse not to spend more time with the children given how underpaid educators are, but to her credit, she’s cautious and took her responsibilities very seriously. She reminded John of the teacher who taught him English in elementary, with the stern expression hiding the hints of kindness on her face. He respected the teacher for not giving in to his lies very easily, he really did, but he hated the fact that she just had to make things harder for him. What if he screws up and she knows? John probably wouldn’t have any trouble fleeing the scene, and neither would Roger, but then he would’ve let Queen down.

John feigned a look that was a mixture between surprise and amusement as he responded, “Oh no, we give this tour every day of the year. I mean, you’re free to come but,” he paused for a moment, waiting for her to fill in the blanks and turn around so they could finally infiltrate the building, and had to bite back as sigh when she stared at him blankly, waiting for him to continue. “But I think a hard-working educator like you deserve a break, don’t you?” he added. Roger nodded energetically at his side, piping in, “Absolutely.” There was a moment of silence during which John considered just physically pushing the brunette to walk back into the bus, but before he could contemplate on the pros and cons of doing that, she spoke again, “Alright then. I guess I’ll see you guys at five.” The children waved at her as she walked back to the bus, although some seemed more interested in conversing with their friends.

Roger waved at her enthusiastically at his side, saying, “Go get mani pedi or something!” Before the orange school bus was even outside, John and Roger guided the children into the building, Brian telling them that they had another thirty seconds before the lockdown. Thankfully, by the time they passed the metal detector, Roger’s sour mood had already passed. Both of them were patted down while the kids stood at one corner, waiting for them. “There are a lot of ex-military muscles around here. Secret service et cetera,” Roger whispered once they were out of the hearing range of the guards who had searched them for illegal items, and John wouldn’t have heard it if it wasn’t for the earpiece. 

He looked around at the men and women standing guard all over the lobby of the building, wondering how Roger knew because they looked just like any other security workers you would find in places like this. It was interesting to think that a mere agriculture company would need such experts as guards, but John could understand why they would be so paranoid with their evil deeds. “You can tell by their stance,” Roger said, noticing his curiosity, even though it did not explain anything. A loud, blaring alarm cut through the air with its sheer intensity, signaling the start of the lockdown.

The doors through which they had just walked through were closed, tough-looking men in dark suits guarding them. “Huddle in, everyone,” Roger said, trying to get the kids out of the way of the security guards, who seemed like they could trample even the most innocent of the children in their haste. John sent Roger an inquiring gaze, to which the blond man shrugged. Right, so it seemed that Roger hadn’t planned it this far. “Come here, kids,” John said, leading the group of children towards a board near the center of the lobby, a map of three areas of the building shown. 

John ideally would’ve liked to have more time to study the structure of the building, to find out where each vent would lead to and the shortcuts available, but with how spontaneous Queen had been up until now, he would just have to follow their lead and make do with what he had. His eyes zeroed in on the most interesting floor on the map, the only one with three different colours signifying the three different security zones. “The most interesting thing about Verdagra is it’s security,” he began, secretly liking his role as a teacher at the moment. John himself had come to forget about it, but when he was eleven, his biggest dream was to teach Mathematics in an elementary school.

Being able to fake being one was quite thrilling—for just one moment he could pretend that he was a normal school teacher leading his students on a school trip, without actually having to give up the life of crime that he’d come to fall in love with. Of course, he didn’t actually have a clue as to what real teachers would say in trips like these, so he went with the only thing that interested him, security systems. “We’re currently in the public area, but this,” he said, pointing to the layout of the top floor, “is where all the exciting things happen.” The kids didn’t seem all that interested, most of them listening passively while a group of three boys engaged in a battle of slapping with each other.

At least Roger was nodding eagerly, smiling as John explained, “See, it looks like a bullseye, with green, yellow, and red areas. Red is for top secret, the best place here.” A very nice girl smiled and nodded when he looked at her, although he wasn’t sure if she had actually been paying attention because her eyes seemed distant when she thought he wasn’t looking. “So, Teacher Jo—Jason. What if I want to get to the red zone?” Roger asked, quite possibly genuinely. Personally, John would’ve preferred breaking in through the windows in the middle of the night, but that did not seem like an option right now—once the scientists studied Anne’s potato, it’ll all be over. The only option they had would be to steal security passes that will grant them access to the more restricted areas.

“Well, Teacher Richard, that’s not possible for us because we only have guest passes,” John replied, tugging at the security pass that hung around his neck from the lanyard he’d picked up while the kids were distracted, as if to prove his point. Roger hummed thoughtfully before speaking again, “So if we were to stea— _ find  _ someone else’s badge, then it won’t be a problem, right?” It should be that easy for them to get into the red zone, had the CEO of Verdagra not been so paranoid. John responded by shaking his head. “Well, that’s the tricky part. The badges are also  _ crackers _ ,” he said, placing a great emphasis on the word cracker as to signify that the word he actually meant was tracker. From the look in his eyes, Roger did not seem to have any trouble following, and the blond showed this by repeating the word and raising his fingers in air quotes.

“So what happens is that the scary security system will know wherever you go,” he continued. Thankfully, the children did not seem very interested in the exchange between them. “So we have to confuse the security system to get the potato,” Roger said, his face lighting up as bright as the imaginary light bulb above his head. John nodded, “That’s right!” From the earpiece, John gathered that Freddie had called in the head of the IT department for an interrogation, probably in an attempt to clear the IT room for Brian to use. John and Roger ended up finding an empty room with a television set where children from school trips are usually made to watch a two-hours documentary about Verdagra, so after setting the movie up and making sure that the kids were watching, the two of them headed to the IT room.

“The security system will will detect anyone who tries to go to the red zone, so we’ll need at least three badges to make it think we’re not the same people,” Roger said as they walked out of the TV room, and John couldn’t help but absent-mindedly snatch a grey coat that was hanging from the back of a chair as they passed the office area. The owner of the jacket, who seemed to be occupied with her typing, did not notice, and if Roger did, he didn’t mention it. “Yeah, Freddie will get you those,” Brian responded through the two-way communication device, the sound of typing echoing dully in their ears. “Okay, Freddie. You’ll need to call in Janine Wei Ng, Sarah Pérez, and James McFadden,” Brian instructed. Freddie requested to interrogate those three employees, and by the time he finished speaking to Jenna, John and Roger were already inside the IT room, where Brian was hunched up in front of an enormous computer.

The blue lights from the LEDs that decorated what looked like rows after rows of servers lining the walls, combined with the light from the monitors that Brian was using, were the only sources of illumination that painted the room a futuristic shade of blue. Brian had turned to them with a smile, but his face morphed into a look of surprise mixed with panic as his eyes dropped to the spot behind them. John turned around in confusion only to see a small young boy standing in the doorway behind them, looking around the room with wonder twinkling in his deep brown eyes. “Hey, didn’t I tell you to watch the movie?” Roger asked, dropping on his knees to look at the boy, whom they recognized as Trevor, the jokester of the school group, directly in the eye. 

John narrowed his eyes in suspicion. How was it possible that neither of them had noticed an extra set of footfalls as they moved towards the IT room then? He’d heard about child assassins before—children trained into taking lives because it’s easier to avoid suspicion and move around as kids rather than adults—and wondered if the small, wide-eyed boy was one of them. “It’s boring!” The young boy replied. There was a small stretch of silence during which a serious expression showed on Roger’s face, before the blond concluded, “Fair enough. Come here.” He led the boy towards the computer where Brian was sitting, and pulled a chair to place it beside the curly-haired man, the sound of its legs scratching against the floor reverberating across the room. 

The young boy followed excitedly, although the delightful look on his face contrasted the frown on Brian’s. “What are you thinking? What if he talks?” Brian asked, looking at the small child as if he was Death itself. Roger responded with a dismissive wave of his hand, “He’s a kid, no one’s gonna listen to him. We’d be long gone by the time he blabs anyway.” John himself was more worried about the kid being one of those rumoured child assassins, but he kept his thoughts to himself. Brian shook his head, his mop of curls moving wildly around his head, “But he shouldn’t be watching! Kids shouldn’t be seeing stuff like these.” The boy’s head moved back and forth between Roger and Brian as they argued, eyes gleaming with childhood innocence, but John couldn’t help seeing him as coldly calculating his next moves.

“We’re not murdering anyone, Brian. It’s fine,” Roger retorted. Brian opened his mouth to reply, but the words seemed to die on his tongue as a loud gasp sounded from behind them. John whipped his head towards the source of the sound, and barely had the time to register looking at a dark-skinned man in a sky blue shirt standing in the doorway, eyes widened in shock and mouth agape, one hand holding a steaming mug of coffee, when something fast and brown blurred in his vision as it moved towards the intruder’s face. During the time it took for the mug he had been holding to slip from his grasp and crash on the floor, Roger had moved across the room towards him. and by the time the crunch of the mug shattering resonated in the air, Roger was already standing directly in front of the unexpected visitor, blocking John’s view of the unlucky stranger.

The poor unsuspecting man fell to the ground where the black liquid of the coffee was slowly spreading into a puddle of darkness, a loud thud and a small splashing sound marking his defeat. John blinked a few times, trying to process what had just happened. It seemed that Roger had thrown the clipboard (containing the names of the students under Quincy's Green Farmers Club) towards the intruder’s face, before swiftly sending him to sleep with a skilled blow on the temple. It was so quick that it could not have been anything but reflex. Brian’s hand was covering Trevor's eyes, hoping to protect him from bearing witness to the act of violence that had just been committed, but judging by the way the young boy’s jaws went slack with surprise, he must’ve been too late.

Roger was crouched on the floor and looking guiltily towards Trevor, ignoring the hot glare Brian sent his way. “He’s—um, not dead. He’s sleeping,” he said awkwardly, dragging the unconscious man by the armpits towards the back of the room where he would be hidden from view. Brian had retrieved his hand from Trevor’s face when Roger joined them again in front of the computer. “That was cool!” The young boy said, surprising the three of them. This boy probably watched too many action movies. Roger grinned proudly at that, chest puffing with pride as he patted the young boy in the back, “I can teach you if you want.” Trevor jumped in his seat excitedly at that offer, but Brian shook his head and rolled his eyes, placing a hand on the youngest’s shoulder to stop him.

“No,” he said sternly, turning to glare at Roger, “You go get the passes, and I’ll stay here with the kid.” Both Trevor and Roger’s expressions fell at that, and the two of them looked at Brian with disappointed gazes, only to be met with an unchanging countenance from Brian’s part. “Fine, but I’m taking John with me,” Roger said, leaving John no choice but to follow as his arm was pulled, the blond stomping out of the room. Brian shouted at them to remind them about locking the door this time, and it echoed loudly in their ears. The hacker gave them directions towards a lengthy corridor that led to the interrogation room. They passed Freddie and Jenna on their way towards the coffee machine at the end of the hallway, but did not make any eye contact in order to avoid any suspicions. John did, however, notice Freddie passing something that looked like a badge to Roger as they passed each other and wondered whose badge that was.

The other two disappeared behind a door upon which a metal plaque hung, announcing it as the  _ Security Detention Room _ , and the click of the door resonated throughout the hallway. Just as John and Roger busied themselves with the coffee machine, three workers were escorted towards the set of chairs lined up against the wall directly opposite from the room where Freddie and Jenna were waiting. A thin man with a pair of narrow, rimless glasses perched on the bridge of his nose fidgeted nervously as he sat between an olive-skinned Asian woman in a white lab coat and a middle-aged woman with short honey brown tresses.

When they heard Jenna speak to Freddie, her tone was incredulous, “You’re questioning a botanist, an accountant, and the in-house masseuse?” Roger snickered at that, watching as John filled the mugs with the company’s logo up with the black liquid from the coffee machine. Freddie only sounded slightly defeated as he replied, “Yes. Yes I am.” There was the sound of papers rustling in the background, so John imagined Freddie going through a few documents in hope of something that could help him appear less suspicious. “Sorry, Fred, we should’ve given you a heads up about that,” Brian apologized through the earpiece, his soft voice laced with disappointment. “You mean  _ you _ should’ve given him the heads up,” Roger corrected, a smirk on his face, and John could practically hear Brian roll his eyes at that.

“The three of them are having quite an affair—he fathered children with both of these women,” Freddie explained, and John couldn’t help but gape slightly at that as he arranged the mugs on top of a tray. From Roger’s expression he appeared quite scandalized at Freddie’s words as well, and John couldn’t help but wonder if it was all made up or if it was real. “The paternity expenses are  _ enormous _ ,” Freddie continued, putting great emphasis on the word enormous, “which could be a motive to betray your company. For the right prize, of course.” The soft, almost inaudible footsteps that echoed in their ears and John guessed Freddie must have walked away from Jenna because the next words were whispered, and directed to Brian, “Dammit Bri.” Brian apologized again, and asked Freddie how he came up with such an idea, so it confirmed that it was all made up on the spot.

Freddie mumbled something that sounded like, “I don’t know” although it was too soft to be heard clearly. Roger seized the tray from his hand and walked away towards the set of chairs where the three workers called for a questioning were. John watched as Roger passed the mugs of coffee to the three nervous employees, lifting each of their badges with the circular tray hiding his misdeed from view. It wasn’t bad—he seemed a little rough as he tugged the passes away instead of gently unclipping them from their places like John would’ve done, but his charming smile and small talk was probably distracting enough for the victims not to notice. John waited a few moments, busying himself making another cup of coffee as to not seem dubious, before heading towards the turn in the hallway where he last saw Roger’s blond head.

When they met each other again, hidden from the eyes of their victims, Roger was wrapping three out of the four badges in aluminium foils. “Don’t forget to wrap them in foils so that they block the signal of the ID tags,” Brian reminded them. Roger placed two of the passes in his pocket and confirmed, “Done.” The two of them marched towards the elevator, gaining access to the top floor of the building by using one of their newly-gained passes. He watched as Roger threw the badge into the silver metal can outside of the elevator once they had reached the destination floor. Following Brian’s instruction, they walked down the empty corridor towards an office area, where quiet murmuring was heard. Placing a hand on Roger’s chest to stop him from barging into the area and exposing themselves, John waited until the murmurs quiet down into silence before poking his head out from behind the wall that was hiding them, and scanned the room to make sure that the coast was clear.

They silently made their way towards a brown door with a yellow sign that warned them that only authorized personnel were allowed to pass through to the yellow area. Beside the door was a thick black keypad with a small LCD screen asking them for a PIN number. “There’s a keypad on the door,” Roger whispered, craning his head around to make sure no one was coming their way. The clattering of Brian’s keyboard filled the short moment of silence that followed. “It’s a Glen Reeder, so it needs a five digit PIN,” Brian began. John could hear Trevor gasping and saying something like, “Cool!” so he guessed that Brian must have pulled up some four dimensional blueprint of the specific keypad type. 

John could practically hear the smile on Brian’s face as he continued, “More than 90% of the population use the same PIN over and over again, and I have the security footage, so I can see the cafeteria ATM.” There was a moment of silence before he spoke again, “Okay, here it is—11037,” Roger punched in the digits as soon as the numbers reached their ears, and their victory in infiltrating the yellow zone of the top floor was marked by the click of the door unlocking. They entered through the door into a hallway lined with a strip of yellow paint in the middle of its white walls, and Roger announced, “Alright, we’re in yellow.”

The hallways were devoid of the decorative fake plants that embellished the areas where the walls were lined with thick green lines, and it was quieter. They stopped once Brian warned them that they were close to the door to the red zone, and spied at a grey door from behind the corner of the wall. A man leaned against a wall beside the door, attention kept on the phone in his hand. John’s eyes zeroed in on the double locks on the door, just under another warning sign, and wished he had brought his tool kit with him. Those locks looked sophisticated, and it would be great fun to crack them. “There’s a guard and a dual manual lock,” Roger said once they have both stepped away from where they had been peeping, volume low.

“As in an actual key?” Brian asked, to which Roger confirmed by saying, “As in two actual keys.” There was a sigh on the hacker’s part, before he spoke again, “Well, you can’t expect me to hack that. Does the guard have a key?” Taking another peek at the distracted guard, Roger confirmed that the unsuspecting man did indeed have one key attached to a metallic belt clip. Freddie had offered to call in the head of security for a questioning so that they could lift his key, but Roger complained that it would be a pain to have to get back downstairs and up again, because that meant that they would need more badges. “Can’t you just pick the lock or something?” the blond whispered to him.

John shrugged and responded, “I’d love to, but I came here to watch, right? I didn’t bring my tools—not that they would’ve gotten past the security check at the entrance anyway.” The two manual locks were staring at him from their place on the door, just begging him to pick them open. There was a faint humming that caught their attention, so they walked towards the source of the sound towards where an old man was standing beside a janitor cart, filling a transparent spray bottle with a foamy dark blue liquid. John was about to turn away in disinterest when he saw a key on his belt, shape similar to the guard’s. It seemed that Roger had also noticed the key, because he told Brian about the old man.

“He’s Scott McCue, the head custodian,” Brian supplied, before saying in a worried voice, “He’s going to notice though, if you take his key.” John did not respond as he walked towards the old man, smiling when he was noticed, before sneezing right into his face and taking the custodian’s surprise as an opportunity to steal both his key and his badge from him. He rounded a corner so that he was no longer within Scott’s view, Roger’s stifled laughter echoing in his ears. From the building's speakers and the intercom in his ear, he could hear Brian’s voice reverberate around him, “Scott McCue, Scott McCue. Please report to security. Scott McCue.” After making sure the old man had left, John rejoined Roger near the grey door with the dual lock. 

“Freddie, distract him. Make sure he doesn’t notice his keys are gone,” Brian instructed, and John could hear the faint creaking of a door. That was fast, especially for an old man. As Freddie was beginning the interrogation with a few basic questions, Roger had walked up to the guard and knocked him out with a punch in the jaw. The guard’s limp body slid down against the wall to the floor, and John crouched down beside him to retrieve his key. They opened the grey door with ease, listening as Brian tried to help Freddie out, “I’m trying to find something on him you could use, but he’s clean. Ridiculously clean.” Freddie did not respond as he proceeded to ask the old custodian more questions, “Would you say you’re underpaid?” There was sputtering from Scott’s side as he hesitated to answer the question, and the sound of fumbling signified his fidgeting. It was suspicious for someone so ridiculously clean, as per Brian’s words, to be so nervous about such a simple question, John thought, but then again, he might just not like being interrogated in general.

“Mr. McCue, why do you have a bank account on the Caveman Islands?” Freddie pressed on, not giving the old man much room to answer the previous question. Brian made a noise of surprise, and the clattering of his keyboard intensified as he scrambled to search for the imaginary account Freddie had just talked about, to make sure. “Wait, he  _ does _ have one,” Brian said, sounding shocked. “I knew you were on to me,” a foreign voice that could have only belonged to Scott McCue said, fear and frustration mixed in his voice. “When I saw your dead eyes, your  _ dead _ eyes, I just knew,” he continued, sounding more paranoid as the second goes.

He admitted to having betrayed the company when Jenna asked, his voice full of hatred and anger, “Yes, and it feels good to say it!” It was ironic that they found the real mole whilst faking trying to find one. “I’m impressed. I’ll let Mr. Sanders know so he could lift the lockdown,” Jenna said, to their dismay. John and Roger shared a panicked look from where they stood in front of a vault. Once the lockdown was lifted, all of the security protocols would resume, and that would mean that they could easily get caught in the matter of minutes. John’s hand stilled on the cold metal surface of the handwheel, trying to gauge how fast he could crack the safe door open and if it would be quick enough for them to be able to steal the mark. To his relief, Freddie spoke, trying to buy them more time, “You really think he works alone?” John did not dare release a sigh of relief, but he pressed his ear against the metallic door of the vault again, resuming his work in cracking it open, trusting Freddie to take care of everything.

“For more than ten years? He must be protecting someone, and I have my suspicions on Sanders,” Freddie continued, although John barely heard it with his focus on the vault, listening for the soft click that would indicate the next right move. Jenna did not seem convinced at first, but Freddie manipulated her by telling her that if they were right about it, she would be the sole saviour of Verdagra, to which she seemed to show desire towards. By the time John managed to swing the vault door open to reveal a freezer-like room, Jenna was already telling her men to keep an eye on Sanders. There were about twenty metal racks arranged neatly on both sides of the room, filled with boxes of different sizes. Water vapour was flowing down from near the ceiling as white smokes that warned them of the freezing temperature.

“He’s gonna notice the guards are watching him,” Roger said while scanning the room in front of them. “It’s fine, Freddie will buy us time. I’ve got the blueprint of the vault here, so I’ll walk you through this,” Brian said, his constant sound of typing paused for once. Roger was already walking into the freezing room by the time Brian spoke again, “The vault has two chambers, and the first one is the seed vault. There should be a keypad at the back of the room that will lead you to the burn room.” 

Even before John stepped into the seed vault to follow Roger’s lead, he knew that the temperature must be well below freezing from the way that his body was starting to shake just from standing near the doorway of the vault. Roger cursed when he almost slipped on an icy patch, although his stuttering due to the trembling of his body sent red flags to Brian. “Don’t tell me you guys are already  _ inside _ the seed vault,” he said, sounding panicked. Roger responded by telling him that he’s already near the keypad, his teeth chattering in the coldness. “Get out of there! It's negative 20 degrees Fahrenheit in there and you’ve only got a minute before your core temperature drops, and your exposed skin gets permanent frostbite,” Brian shouted, voice full of worry. Roger responded by covering the exposed skin of his neck and collarbone by pulling his shirt to cover them.

This, John decided, was not worth dying for. Almost no crime was worth putting a life on the line for, especially when it’s so obvious how high the risk of dying was. So with a gentle pull on Roger’s elbow, he tried to pull the blond man back out before it was too late, “C-c’mon.” Roger was so stubborn about it, however, shaking his head and lowering himself to breathe on the digital keypad, four sets of fingerprints appearing at the touch of his warm breath. “T-they’ll b-beat Freddie up. I kn-know,” he responded, trying to punch in a random combination of the four digits upon which ghostly fingerprints had appeared. “Got the l-last four d-digits used. Zero, four, six, two.” John considered leaving Roger to stand in the warmth outside of the vault, but found himself unwilling to move from his spot. Roger was trembling fiercely at his side, trying his best to test out all the combinations of the four digits for the sake of Freddie, who was telling him not to be foolish, and that he would be fine.

It was the look of pure determination on Roger’s face that made him understand: it was not the crime that was worth dying for, it was the camaraderie between them. As John stood there almost literally frozen, he found himself longing to be cared for in the same way and to be able to return the gesture without ending up getting betrayed. “I’m trying all combinations,” Roger whispered, fingers shaking as they hovered over the keypad. “No! It’s not a four-digit code so some numbers will repeat. Get out of there! You have about twenty seconds,” Brian said, cutting over Freddie’s whispers of worry. Roger did not budge, but gestured for John to leave, even though the thief maintained his spot beside the blond, hugging himself in an attempt to warm up. “T-then help me figure it out, Bri. You’re supposed to be the smart one right?” 

The coldness was starting to seep through their bones, sending uncontrollable shivers down their spine. John didn’t remember ever being this cold, not even during the days he was homeless. “Fine um—six digits, so a date. Sanders is the only one who knows, so it can’t be random,” Brian’s voice was frantic and the sound of typing from his end intensified. “The day he became CEO! I don’t remember—Fred, what—” Brian continued, before being cut off by Roger telling him that he remembered the date. He punched in the six digits, and within a few seconds, the door opened and they stepped into the burn room, the light warm air hitting them like soft pillows on their face after a long, miserable day. John heaved a sigh of relief, no longer feeling as if he was going to freeze to death.

Before them was a very sophisticated laser grid, narrow green lines moving and changing positions every ten seconds, keeping them away from the pedestal at the back of the vault. John felt excited, like a child opening a Christmas present—this was his playground. Roger seemed to have sensed his giddiness, turning to him with a smile while rubbing his hands together to warm up his body even more, “I trust you’ll be happy to get the potato for us? I need to get to Fred.” John nodded, already taking the stolen coat he had been wearing off and pulling his hair up into a bun so that they won’t get in the way. Roger passed him another badge wrapped in aluminium foil, and John figured that this was the one Freddie had passed to them on his way to the questioning room. The fourth badge.

“Be careful,” he shouted, Roger having already gone to the freezing room again, worried that the blond might slip on another patch of ice and get himself killed. Roger turned to him with a bright smile that warmed John’s heart despite the freezing image laid out before him, and replied, “You too, mate!” Both of them turned back around quickly, each focused on their new task at hand. John waited a few seconds to watch and understand the patterns by which the lasers move, trying to find a way around them. Once he felt that he was confident enough, he stepped into the laser grid and dodged the beams with ease. Freddie must have already been called to Sander’s office, as the CEO’s voice echoed in John’s ears as he made his way through the laser grid, “Who are you working for? The board? They have known me for years.”

When Freddie tried to calmly explain himself with some made up story, he was cut off by the CEO again, his voice venomous, “I can  _ smell _ disloyalty.” Once he reached the center of the laser grid, he threw the badge Roger had given him onto the floor outside of the grid, waiting for the signals to be picked up by the system. He resumed carefully making his way to the back of the room where the potato waited, encased in a small, black briefcase. “The board hired you to find dirt on me? I have enemies, I know I do,” Collin spoke again, voice low, “I bet they have a whole team planting evidence. Search for them.” By the time John reached three-thirds of the room towards the bottom upon which the potato sat, Brian can already be heard rushing out of the IT room, Trevor’s voice quiet protest falling on deaf ears as the hacker said, “John, we’re blown. Get out of there.”

The loud wailing of a siren erupted in their ears and overlapped with each other, coming from four different sources in their earpieces. “Almost there,” John said, eyeing the mark and keeping his steady pace, knowing that there should be enough time for him to at least get to the potato. A voice John had never heard before spoke, directing his words to Collin, “Sir, there’s an intruder in the vault. The system says that it’s you.” John smirked, noting that it took quite a while for the security system to pick up the signals from Collin Sander’s badge, which Freddie had stolen for them during his time in the CEO’s office. “I’m being set up. I’ll see the evidence burn before it brings me down,” Collins said, the sound of footsteps signifying his walk towards his desk, where the button connected to the burn room was kept. John had already reached the pedestal by then, quickly opening the case and taking the potato into his hand.

“Take care of him,” the CEO spoke again, this time to his guards. As if on cue, Roger announced his arrival to Collin’s office with the loud sound of a door being pushed open. John would’ve really liked to see the fight which ensued, no matter how short-lived it was. There was a series of quick thuds from their side, followed by a few grunts from some strangers, before it became quiet again. “John, get out of there!” Freddie said, and it was the first time John heard him sound so scared. With the potato wrapped in his hands, John ran out of the room and ended up sliding on his knees in the seed vault, pushed by inertia towards the exit. 

His back was licked by the heat which emanated from the blazing fire he had just barely outrun, but when he turned his head to look at the fierce inferno that could’ve easily turned him and the Super Tuber into ashes, all he felt was the sweet feeling of victory. He wouldn’t ever describe himself as an adrenaline seeker—he’s always careful and planned in the actions that he take, and rarely takes risks even when it meant the possibility of a bigger return—but the feeling of managing to escape death by a hair’s width gave him a high he had been missing his entire life. Once he was back on his feet, he assured the rest of the team that he was safe. 

Following Brian’s order, John first went to the office area to cut a thin slice out of the potato using a paper cutter, as it would be difficult to smuggle out the entirety of the ugly plant at this point. A thin slice is all Anne needed to be able to grow a farm of it, after all. He then dropped by to the kitchen area on the first floor, sneaking around a few cooks in order to drop the rest of the potato into a basin which contained even more potatoes, and he smiled at the man in a white apron who looked at him with suspicion before making it out of the kitchen and walking back towards the entrance of the building. Brian, Trevor, and the rest of the children were waiting for him near the metal-detecting arch. The curly-haired man smiled at him before handing the kids off to him, not wanting to appear out of place in his dark blue uniform. 

The lockdown had already been lifted, Collins wanting to focus on finding Freddie’s acquaintances. John managed to slip the thin slice of potato into Trevor’s hand, who seemed to understand the situation and hid it in his backpack, a sly smile on his face. Just as he was about to lead the kids out of the building, Collins stepped down from the stairs and stopped him, directing his question to the man walking beside him, “Who’s this?” John put on the straightest face he could muster as he answered, “We are Quincy's Green Farmers Club. And I’ll tell you something, sir, we are writing you a stern letter.” The CEO looked at him, eyes full of suspicion, before saying, “I don’t care who they are. Search everyone, including the kids.” John was already trying to think of a plan to escape the situation he was in when thankfully, Jenna West approached them and said, “Mr. Sanders, I have the board of directors on the line.”

Collin responded with a distracted ,”What?”, to which Jenna replied, “I’ll make it easy for you—you’re fired.” While John was blinking in confusion and trying to figure out what was happening before him, Brian explained he had transferred all of McCue’s dirty money from his Cavemen Islands account into Collin Sander’s account. John hid his smirk as he watched Jenna break the news to the now-ex-CEO, “You really think you could get away with this? You were paid to ignite a room full of acquisitions—we literally saw the money go into your account!” All of Collin’s desperate struggles were futile as two guards who had once worked for him carried him away, and John couldn’t deny the satisfaction of watching him lose his place like that, especially since he played a role in helping frame him. 

Just as John was about to usher the children out of the building when a few more guards approached them to carry Jenna away, Brian adding, “Oh, and I made the transfer appear to come from Jenna, to pay her back for all the crimes against the innocent that she had helped him with.” Despite the havoc, John was still searched for anything suspicious before he walked out of the building, but thankfully, the kids were let go as easily as they had been let in. The school bus was already waiting for them in front of the building, their teacher standing at its side and greeting them energetically as they approached her. 

“You guys are so cool!” Trevor said to him as he slid his hand inside the young boy’s backpack, retrieving the slice of potato they had worked so hard to steal back. He couldn’t help the wide grin that formed on his lips, pride and fondness pooling in his chest as he whispered, “Don’t try it though, you’ll get caught.” John wasn’t sure if the little kid was going to listen to his warning, but Trevor did respond with a nod and waved at him as he ran into the bus to follow the rest of the group. The rest of the group joined him outside the building just after the bus left, Roger holding out a paper plate with chips to him. “Is that the Super Tuber?” He asked before pulling out the longest chip he could find in the pile. Roger nodded, and through a mouthful of potato chips, replied, “They’re slightly burnt though.”

* * *

That night, John found himself at the  _ Taste of Rhye  _ again, being gifted with free food and good beer in celebration of the successful heist they had pulled out that day. When they saw Anne walk through the doors, Freddie had leaned in over the table and passed the slice of Super Tuber they had smuggled out to John with a smile. “You should hand this to her. After all, you played a huge role in stealing it,” Freddie had said, to which both Brian and Roger agreed to, telling him that they had no idea how they would have managed without him that day. John thought that they would have managed just fine, but he took the potato anyway, and was the one to hand it over to Anne.

The brown-haired woman smiled at him as he did, pulling him into an unexpected hug in her contentment. John had gone rigid at the touch, his fight or flight response kicking in even though he managed to keep still and not push her off—he hadn’t been hugged for longer than he cared to remember. If the embrace was just as awkward for her as it had been for him, she didn’t show it. Once she released him from her arms, she smiled and thanked them all fervently. “Now, you can sell it by yourself and earn credit for your work,” John had said through a smile, unable to contain the warmth he felt seeing someone being so happy because of something he’d helped with. Her smile did not wilt as she shook her head and explained, “No, I’ll be giving this out for free.” 

His confusion must have been visible on his face—giving away something so precious for free was just a difficult concept for him to grasp, after all the years he had spent stealing items worth billions—because she continued, “Every year, half a million kids go blind because they lack Vitamin A, and there are kids whose family live on less than a pound a day. I can’t take their money.” She thanked them again and left, not knowing how much her words impacted John, who had already forgotten that there are kind people in this world, too, because of how harsh the hand of fate he had been dealt with was. As the restaurant door swung close again, he felt a hand on his shoulder, trying to get his attention, and he turned around to see Roger smiling at him, “You should join us.” Before John had the chance to respond, Freddie joined in, taking both of John’s hands into his, “Yes, darling! You  _ have _ to join us. We’re all meant to be together!”

John smiled shyly at the invitation, already knowing that he’ll end up accepting their offer. Brain was less forceful, although no less enthusiastic, as he added, “Only if you want to, of course. What we want to say is that we’ve enjoyed working with you.” John nodded and told them that he had enjoyed working with them too, although he asked for some time to think over their offer. As much as he wanted to jump into the group and repeat the heist that the had pulled that day, he was still filled with anxious thoughts at the notion of deciding on the spot. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you for reading and the engagement you've given. Happy New Years, and stay safe everyone!
> 
> (There's a reference to a game in this one because I just like doing it. Tell me if you guys saw it ;) )


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